Woman of Color touches nerve

Barbara Hernandez’s article [“A Woman of Color Who’s Seeing Red,” Aug. 24] reminded me of something a Hispanic nurse told me last week.

“When my husband died and my kids and I moved into a condo, I overheard a neighbor say to his elderly father, ‘There goes the neighborhood -- the Mexicans are moving in.’

But I got him good. Three years later I married him!”

RICHARD SHOWSTACK

Newport Beach

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I am one wide-eyed, grateful Anglo guy for whom great lessons in intimacy have been taught by women of many colors, shapes and sizes. Passion and heat are colorblind traits. Perhaps the fact that nights are dark has given people the opportunity to lose race-based sexual inhibitions. I recognize that if God exists, he or she or it created the curve on a woman’s body where her neck slides gently onto her shoulder -- some perfections can’t have been left to random chance. I’ll always feel young and a bit vulnerable in the magical presence of a fine woman.

TIM BRISTOL

Santa Barbara

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I am a little shocked by your commentary. By grouping all white guys together, you display a behavior eerily similar to that of your boyfriend.

Hernandez writes, “Women of color dating white men seem to eternally be the teacher in the relationship, one of the biggest turnoffs to their hotness in bed.”

By the way, I am a man of color.

EBENEZER MACINTOSH

Thousand Oaks

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I hate to burst your bubble, but all of us white guys are not obtuse, closet racists who are obsessed over juvenile sexual stereotypes.

How good someone is in bed is determined by the attraction, passion and love that is brought to a mutual relationship.

In short, it’s what’s inside a person’s soul and character that counts, not their color.

Perhaps you need to look into the mirror to find out why you are dating so many losers who subscribe to this silly racial stereotyping.

ALAN K. RODE

Encino

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I don’t know what’s worse: white males stereotyping ethnic women or ethnic women stereotyping white males. If Hernandez is ambivalent about dating “colonizers and oppressors,” then she shouldn’t. But please don’t do to men the exact thing she says is being done to her. It’s clear that any man who disagrees with her regarding illegal immigration is quickly deemed a racist. There are many people who happen to believe that we need border control simply for the reason that we cannot accommodate unlimited numbers of people coming into this country. That is not racist.

ROBIN MEARNSRancho Palos Verdes

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Colonizers, oppressors, white bread? The pot is certainly calling the kettle black when you utter the word “prejudice” -- quit your whining and lose your victim mentality. Oh, and by the way, this Caucasian man assigns no “hotness” factor to women of color -- the one Hispanic girlfriend I had was a great person but her Catholic upbringing dampened the ardor in the sexual arena.

TOM HOLLAND

Baldwin Park

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As a male of color, it is interesting that people are surprised by the acts and actions of the white male. Keep in mind I am not saying all males of this color fit a pattern of superiority belief and who might be insensitive to another person’s feeling. Rather it is a certain arrogance that says the world is my kingdom and as king I make the rules and indulge in whatever fantasies I have acquired through my acculturation process. Will this article cause massive change? Probably not. However, sometimes it takes a while for the grain of sand in a shoe to cause enough pain for a person to stop and examine what they are experiencing. May Hernandez continue to share with her readers and fellow Earth travelers!

BARRY MENSER

Diamond Bar

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I’m black and I’ve never had the problems that Barbara Hernandez has had, probably because all two of my white boyfriends have been from the Old South, where the type of prejudice she seems to have run into had been looked at squarely in the face a generation ago.

As a result of the South’s hard introspection, guys like the ones I dated grew up next door to black people (and, recently, Hispanics) and went to school with them. The same can rarely be said for white people from the Northeast, Northwest and even California.

I think that some white people from these regions tend to be smugly condescending to white Southerners because of their past. But I’ve encountered more racism in California (I grew up here) than I ever did in Texas or Alabama. I chalk this up to the fact that other regions never had to confront their racism the way the South has had to.

JULIETTE OCHIENG

Los Angeles

#S#

California than ever